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But the truly monstrous genocides, the ones with tens of millions of victims, depended not so much on gradually shifting political forces as on a few contingent ideas and events. The appearance of Marxist ideology in particular was a historical tsunami that is breathtaking in its total human impact.

Why should utopian ideologies so often lead to genocide? At first glance it seems to make no sense. Even if an actual utopia is unattainable for all kinds of practical reasons, shouldn’t the quest for a perfect world at least leave us with a better one—a world that is 60 percent of the way to perfection, say, or even 15 percent? After all, a man’s reach must exceed his grasp. Shouldn’t we aim high, dream the impossib

The thickening of the civil war wedge in the 1960s had an obvious trigger: decolonization. European governments may have brutalized the natives when conquering a colony and putting down revolts, but they generally had a fairly well-functioning police, judiciary, and public-service infrastructure...When the colonial governments departed, they took competent governance with them.

The presidential election was an innovation that while allowing the expression of popular opinion, could not by itself create political legitimacy. It merely gave the victor an opportunity to legitimate themselves by their future actions. An Afghan friend explained the difference in cultural perceptions to me this way: “You Americans pray before the meal; we Afghans pray only after we have eaten it.”

Yet perhaps because Afghanistan appeared so backward to outside observers, no thought was given to devising a new type of government for this changed situation. Instead, the international community hurried to restore the highly centralized government first imposed on Afghanistan by Abdur Rahman, albeit one in which the government’s legitimacy was to be based on elections rather than dynastic right.